L'orchidee launches £200k crowdfunding campaign

Chef Daniel Garcia and former food and beverage manager Elias Dayub founded L’orchidee while working at London’s Knightsbridge hotel in 2010.

Now the duo are aiming to raise £200,000 to open two to three London stores offering high-end cakes, coffees, desserts and retail items.

“We are working very hard to become a multi-million pound revenue business, a go-to place for cakes in London, a national brand,” said Dayub.

Growing appetite​

L’orchidee launched its first retail store in Stratford in 2011, followed by Shepherds Bush in 2014 and a grab-and-go outlet in Canary Wharf in 2015.

Now the pair want to use their 9,000 sq.ft production kitchen to take a bigger slice of the UK’s £3.5bn bakery market.

The group began working with Deliveroo in January and are set to open a fourth location in August.

“We have grown from £34,000 revenue in year one, to over £800,000 last year, and are ready to scale the business with our Canary Wharf [grab-and-go] model,” the group said on its Crowdcube page.

Creative cakes​

Garcia is also working on new menu items including wedding cakes, macaron ice creams and pina colada, mojito and passion fruit flavour macarons.

There are also plans to tap in to the booming free-from market with a range of sugar-free and 'paleo' cakes.

At the time of writing the group has raised over £11,000 with 15 days to go.

For more information on L’orchidee’s campaign see here.​